Test PB Collection: FTE

Nitrogen and its Effect on the Balance of Vegetative and Reproductive Growth With the big avocado crop out there, the question came up about whether a grower should add extra nitrogen to encourage more canopy growth to protect the fruit from sunburn or whether that would cause the fruit to drop.

The severe California drought--we're in the fourth year--is affecting us all, but it's also affecting insects, says Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis.

This is a a story about a spider and a skipper. Technically, a banded garden spider (Argiope trifasciata) and a fiery skipper butterfly (Hylephila phyleus, family Hesperiida). The garden spider lies in wait, its head down, clinging to its real estate, an enormous sticky web.

Potassium deficiency in avocado and citrus leaves often looks like salt stress and more specifically sodium toxicity. Plants will often look wilted with curled leaves, yellow areas between leaf veins and dead areas along the margins of the leaves.

Mycotrol-O is a biopesticide with the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana as the active ingredient.

Photographers are frustrated, and rightfully so, with all the thievery on the Internet. Like many other photos, "The Sting," is being used illegally for commercial purposes. It's appeared on sites like PhotoBucket where unscrupulous people sell it as canvas prints and holiday cards.

All sorts of things can be blamed on this prolonged drought. And here's another one avocado brown mite. These arachnids love water stressed trees that are covered with dust. You can see them in most orchards along picking rows, most years.

Deep in the jungles of Cambodia, near the temples of Angkor, an unlikely drama takes place. Blue ants of the genus Leptogenys, native to southeast Asia, surround their prey, a massive millipede. It's almost like circling the wagons in a scene from the Wild West. Or "rodeo-style behavior.

A passion for butterflies coupled with a yearning to protect their habitat is what drives 98-year-old Louise Hallberg, founder of the nine-acre Hallberg Butterfly Gardens in Sebastopol.

The list of crops that have been successfully grown using no-tillage in California continues to increase with garbanzos being the latest addition.